The power of nostalgia

Nostalgia. It is one of those words that I really like. Any dictionary will tell you that nostalgia is: "a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time" or "something that elicits or displays nostalgia".

Nostalgia has also come to mean a yearning to get back to things and ways which may have become obsolete with the passage of time. Last week, we touched on just one of those 'dead' things which have sprung back to life - the vinyl or Long Playing (LP) Record. Even the humble Compact Audio Cassette is making a comeback of sorts, with some labels and artistes opting to release a cassette version as well.

This harking back for all things old and analogue should be understood in the wider context of the world we live in where everything from books or music is digitalised. In other words, everything can be represented in ones and zeroes in the digital world. Purists say these digital representations of our physical world lack what can be called "a soul". It is debatable whether inanimate objects possess a soul, but there is a point in what they are trying to say. Hence our growing affinity towards many things that were apparently on the brink of 'extinction'.

Danger

Take books, for example. When e-books were first introduced more than a decade ago it appeared that print was in danger, but the so-called death of the physical book has not happened. E-book sales during the first five months of 2015 have declined by 10.3 per cent worldwide. In fact, research has shown that e-book sales have not stagnated, if not actually gone down, but print book sales are actually rising. Even Amazon, the world's biggest seller of e-books through its Kindle ecosystem, has opened a physical bookstore. Incidentally, Amazon is also the world's biggest physical bookseller as well. "Books are in our DNA at Amazon.

It was the first product that we started selling. We are the Earth's biggest bookstore and now we are one of the small bookstores too," says Amazon vice-president Jennifer Cast.

Resurgence

There are several factors that have contributed to this resurgence of the physical book. One is that e-book prices are dangerously close to (or even more than) the prices of physical books. With most online retailers shipping the books free, it makes no sense to download an e-book when the physical book can be purchased for the same price. Moreover, just as many Vinyl records come with a digital download code, certain publishers are now bundling e-book and audio book codes with the print book so buyers get the best of both worlds. And physical book publishers are also coming out with special collectible editions that have no equivalent in the digital world.

Independent bookstores have also adopted innovative new tactics to lure readers and buyers. "I have had people come in and say, 'oh I tried the e-book, I tried the e-reader and I am going back to the physical book.' I like the feel, I like the smell, I like the fact that I can actually mark it up where I am, dog ear it," one such bookseller quoted a customer as saying.

Print books have been around for nearly 600 years and chances are they will last at least as long into the future. In case you are worried about dead trees and possible damage to the environment (one of the main arguments against physical books), rest assured they are made mostly from recycled paper now.

Dominance

Another physical medium is coming back: Film. After years of digital dominance, people are rediscovering film. Top Hollywood directors including Quentin Tarantino, J J Abrams and Christopher Nolan have all done their most recent blockbusters on celluloid. Some cinemas even went to the extent of re-installing film projectors just to show these films, putting their digital projectors away.

Kodak, the last remaining manufacturer of motion picture film, will again manufacture its Super 8 film cameras this year. It will have some concessions to the digital world such as an LCD display and Kodak will also provide a HD digital scan of your film print for sharing on social networking sites or watching on your HDTV. Moreover, the top selling camera worldwide during the recent holiday season was Fujifilm's Instax instant film camera.

Many people who initially thought of it only as a toy in the digital camera world, have later realised its versatility. There is something inherently creative about capturing light on film, after all. There is also a healthy market for old-style furniture, clothes, foods, interior decorations and appliances. It seems we all want to get away from the dull uniformity of the digital world.

Effect

But there is a counter argument to the effect that our nostalgia may have an adverse impact on the advancement of technology. If Vinyl becomes king again, what will happen to far superior digital formats such as Blue Ray Pure Audio? A 12 cm blu-ray disc can hold more than six hours of multichannel surround sound - something that Vinyl will never be able to do. An e-reader can easily hold 3,000 books, whereas one can never have so many books in an average house.

And if you have to carry your books around, the maximum number is three or four physical books.

Film cannot be reused - digital memory cards can be and you can tweak your pictures till you get it right. Can you shoot 500 pictures on a film roll? No. But you can - on a digital SD card.

Ultimately, though, there are no clear winners or losers in this game. I myself prefer to have a physical vinyl copy of David Bowie's last album Blackstar, but some people like to have it on a MP3 on a USB stick. In fact, some turntables allow you to record your favourite albums to USB. That itself is an indication that the digital and the analogue, the physical and the virtual can exist together in perfect harmony.

Long live nostalgia indeed.